奥斯曼似乎为了避免与更强大的突厥邻居发生冲突,而决定实行以攻击拜占庭人所控制的领土为扩张策略[13],奥斯曼首先将领地从原本掌握的埃斯基谢希尔一带,贫瘠的北佛里几亚地区扩张到更肥沃的比提尼亚平原;根据学者史丹佛·肖尔(英语:Stanford J. Shaw)的研究,奥斯曼特别针对当地拜占庭贵族所拥有的土地展开征服行动,“其中一些贵族在战斗中被击败,其他领主则经由以金钱购买城镇以及政治联姻等方式和平地被吸收到鄂图曼人的国土中[16]。”
奥斯曼之剑是在鄂图曼帝国历任苏丹于加冕仪式中所需使用的一把重要的国家之剑[23]。授剑的传统源自奥斯曼的岳父谢赫·艾德巴利帮他佩带上这把伊斯兰之剑后,往后的苏丹皆延续这项授剑的即位仪式[24]。佩戴奥斯曼之剑是极为重要的登基典礼,大多于新任苏丹继承皇位的两周内举行。新苏丹首先会从首都伊斯坦堡的托普卡匹皇宫出发,并经由水路横越金角湾抵达艾郁普苏丹清真寺举行加冕仪式。奥斯曼之剑也是苏丹的信物,这把剑象征著:新任的鄂图曼帝国苏丹亦是一名手持战剑的战士。奥斯曼之剑在登基典礼中由一名来自梅夫拉维教团的托钵僧 - 科尼亚的谢里夫(Sharif of Konya)负责佩戴在新苏丹的身上,科尼亚的苏菲派教徒保有这项帮新任苏丹授剑的特权直至鄂图曼帝国灭亡[25]。
Kermeli, Eugenia. Osman I. Ágoston, Gábor; Bruce Masters (编). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. 2009: 444. Reliable information regarding Osman is scarce. His birth date is unknown and his symbolic significance as the father of the dynasty has encouraged the development of mythic tales regarding the ruler’s life and origins, however, historians agree that before 1300, Osman was simply one among a number of Turkoman tribal leaders operating in the Sakarya region.
Kafadar, Cemal. Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State. 1995: xii. There is still not one authentic written document known from the time of ʿOsmān, and there are not many from the fourteenth century altogether.
Finkel, Caroline. Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923. Basic Books. 2005: 6. ISBN 978-0-465-02396-7. Modern historians attempt to sift historical fact from the myths contained in the later stories in which the Ottoman chroniclers accounted for the origins of the dynasty
Imber, Colin. Elizabeth Zachariadou , 编. The Ottoman Emirate (1300-1389). Rethymnon: Crete University Press. 1991: 75. Almost all the traditional tales about Osman Gazi are fictitious. The best thing a modern historian can do is to admit frankly that the earliest history of the Ottomans is a black hole. Any attempt to fill this hole will result simply in more fables.
Kafadar, Cemal. Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State. 1995: 122. That they hailed from the Kayı branch of the Oğuz confederacy seems to be a creative "rediscovery" in the genealogical concoction of the fifteenth century. It is missing not only in Ahmedi but also, and more importantly, in the Yahşi Fakih-Aşıkpaşazade narrative, which gives its own version of an elaborate genealogical family tree going back to Noah. If there was a particularly significant claim to Kayı lineage, it is hard to imagine that Yahşi Fakih would not have heard of it.
Lowry, Heath. The Nature of the Early Ottoman State. SUNY Press. 2003: 78. ISBN 0-7914-5636-6. Based on these charters, all of which were drawn up between 1324 and 1360 (almost one hundred fifty years prior to the emergence of the Ottoman dynastic myth identifying them as members of the Kayı branch of the Oguz federation of Turkish tribes), we may posit that...
Lindner, Rudi Paul. Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia. Indiana University Press. 1983: 10. In fact, no matter how one were to try, the sources simply do not allow the recovery of a family tree linking the antecedents of Osman to the Kayı of the Oğuz tribe.
Finkel, Caroline. Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923. Basic Books. 2005: 12. Beyond the likelihood that the first Ottoman sultan was a historical figure, a Turcoman Muslim marcher-lord of the Byzantine frontier in north-west Anatolia whose father may have been called Ertuğrul, there is little other biographical information about Osman.
Murphey, Rhoads. Exploring Ottoman Sovereignty: Tradition, Image, and Practice in the Ottoman Imperial Household, 1400-1800. London: Continuum. 2008: 24. ISBN 978-1-84725-220-3.
Fleet, Kate. The rise of the Ottomans. Fierro, Maribel (编). The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 2: The Western Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2010: 313. ISBN 978-0-521-83957-0. The origins of the Ottomans are obscure. According to legend, largely invented later as part of the process of legitimising Ottoman rule and providing the Ottomans with a suitably august past, it was the Saljuq ruler ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn who bestowed rule on the Ottomans.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power 2. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2009: 8.
Kafadar, Cemal. Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State. 1995: 129. Of [military undertakings] we know nothing with certainty until the Battle of Bapheus, Osman's triumphant confrontation with a Byzantine force in 1301 (or 1302), which is the first datable incident in his life.
Kermeli, Eugenia. Osman I. Ágoston, Gábor; Bruce Masters (编). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. 2009: 445. Apart from these chronicles, there are later sources that begin to establish Osman as a mythic figure. From the 16th century onward a number of dynastic myths are used by Ottoman and Western authors, endowing the founder of the dynasty with more exalted origins. Among these is recounted the famous “dream of Osman” which is supposed to have taken place while he was a guest in the house of a sheikh, Edebali. [...] This highly symbolic narrative should be understood, however, as an example of eschatological mythology required by the subsequent success of the Ottoman emirate to surround the founder of the dynasty with supernatural vision, providential success, and an illustrious genealogy.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Dynastic Myth. Turcica. 1987, 19: 7–27. The attraction of Aşıkpasazade's story was not only that it furnished an episode proving that God had bestowed rulership on the Ottomans, but also that it provided, side by side with the physical descent from Oguz Khan, a spiritual descent. [...] Hence the physical union of Osman with a saint's daughter gave the dynasty a spiritual legitimacy and became, after the 1480s, an integral feature of dynastic mythology.
Frederick William Hasluck, [First published 1929], "XLVI. The Girding of the Sultan", in Margaret Hasluck, Christianity and Islam Under the Sultans II, pp. 604–622. ISBN978-1-4067-5887-0
Fleet, Kate. The rise of the Ottomans. Maribel Fierro (编). The New Cambridge History of Islam 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2010: 313–331. ISBN 978-0-521-83957-0.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Dynastic Myth. Turcica. 1987, 19: 7–27.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power 2. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2009. ISBN 978-0-230-57451-9.
Lowry, Heath. The Nature of the Early Ottoman State. Albany: SUNY Press. 2003. ISBN 0-7914-5636-6.
Murphey, Rhoads. Exploring Ottoman Sovereignty: Tradition, Image, and Practice in the Ottoman Imperial Household, 1400-1800. London: Continuum. 2008. ISBN 978-1-84725-220-3.
Zachariadou, Elizabeth (编). The Ottoman Emirate (1300-1389). Rethymnon: Crete University Press. 1991.